Tag Archives: eco

I’ve walked by my in-laws old chicken coop a million times. During our last visit, I glanced inside hoping to see a critter so I could take it’s picture. Instead, I found some old windows and immediately had an idea. My daughter has been wanting to keep her jewelry untangled and displayed in a neat way. My idea was a window jewelry display. Here is what I did:

First, I took the glass out of the big frame (the other one already had the glass gone). Then, I cleaned them off with a soft wire brush (Dollar General find) and wiped them down with a wet wash cloth sprayed with Windex. I’m not sure that Windex was the appropriate cleaner to use but it worked. 😉

After they were clean, I screwed in wall hooks on one of the windows and attached window screen to the other window.

It’s all hung and decorated. No more tangled necklaces and what a beautiful wall piece. My daughter loved it!

I love to make use of things no one else wants. I’ve wanted a swing for my front porch for a while so I started looking online. I found a wooden swing that I loved and immediately got the idea of using a pallet. I found a pallet that was going to be thrown away and started to work (with hubby’s help of course).

Step 1 – I took the two end boards off the pallet. Then, I had hubby cut the pallet in half.

Step 2 – I added some boards from the leftover wood to the end of the pallet for drink holders.

Step 3 – I lightly sanded the top and sides….just enough to get rid of anything that would cause splinters. Then, I stained it.

Step 4 – Hubby and I attached the swing to the porch with strong nylon rope. I still want to add an outdoor pillow or two but all and all it’s finished.

UPDATE 5/27/12

I’ve had lots of comments on this projects and I thank you all for stopping by to have a look. I hope those of you brave enough to tackle this project have had great success. Some of you had questions when making the swing so I thought I’d address a few of the most common questions.

The first question I’m going to address is from a comment that for some weird reason disappeared from my comment section and now I can’t personally respond to the person. I apologize. I remember the question for the most part so hopefully this person will read this answer.

Q: How did you keep your swing from tilting when you sit on it? The one I made is tilting and I have small children. I’m afraid they’ll fall off.

A: My swing doesn’t tilt because once we tied the knot and sent the rope in different directions (one to the front of the swing and one to the back), we wrapped the rope around the pallet before tying it the final time. I’m attaching a picture so that you can see what I mean.

The rest of the questions are in the comments below:

Q: How did you guys do the hooking to the ceiling? What type of screws/hook did you use in order to support the weight?

A: We used 8″ long eye bolts. We ran those through a board that was placed across the rafters in the attic. We made sure it would support lots of weight as we have two teenagers with lots of friends.

Q: How did you tie the rope?

A: Our rope was doubled coming down from the eye-bolt in the ceiling. Right above the pallet, we tied a knot in the rope. Each strand hanging below the knot was sent in a different direction…one to the front and one to the back. The strands were wrapped around the pallet and joined back underneath the pallet and tied in a double knot. Basically the more it’s sat on, the tighter the knot gets.

Q: How much Rope did you use?

A: We used approximately 24 feet of rope.

We still love our swing. The wood has faded some and I love the look even more now. Enjoy!